Jackie Valley has lived in northwest Indiana, South Carolina, Cleveland and Dayton, Ohio. A Cleveland girl at heart, she graduated from Kent State University in 2010. She completed a Dow Jones copy editing internship at the Virginian-Pilot in summer 2009 and a year later joined the Las Vegas Sun, where she now covers health care.
Before Jackie Valley tackled her series on the unmet mental health needs of Nevada's children, “community engagement” had not been something she regularly practiced. She shares how she took the plunge.
Parents. Teachers. Psychologists. Psychiatrists. Pediatricians. Therapists. Social workers. Students. State leaders. Nonprofit executives. They had come to discuss the mental health of Southern Nevada’s children, seeking answers to the question of how the state can do better.
Three cases down and a dozen more to go, Judge William Voy surveys the movement below his bench on a Monday afternoon. The fourth defendant on his calendar, a 13-year-old boy, enters from a side door connecting Family Court to the juvenile detention center. He’s no stranger to Courtroom 18.
